What’s New
Welcome to my website! I’m delighted you could visit. Here you’ll find all kinds of information about who I am and what I do — arts criticism, investigative reporting, magazine writing and editing and publishing books. My titles include Paris Times Eight, a memoir using eight trips to Paris, France, to map a coming of age story, and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind The Symbol of Perfection, a backstage history of the dancer from the court of Louis XIV to the present day. My latest, Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World, came out in the fall of 2023, published by Sutherland House Books. It’s available for sale at most bookstores as well as online where it’s listed as No. 1 bestseller on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.ca/Fashioning-Beatles-Looks-Shook-World/dp/1990823327
I READ NEWS TODAY, OH BOY:
On March, 7, 2024, World Book Day, it was announced that Fashioning The Beatles: The Looks That Shook The World is a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist in the category of Pop Culture.
According to the press release, from over 2,400 submissions across 55 categories, Foreword’s U.S.-based editors selected approximately 12 Finalists per genre. Finalist books will now be sent to individual librarians and booksellers, who will determine the Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Honorable Mention winners. Stay tuned!
Fashioning The Beatles book events:
September 12, 2023: New York City — McNally-Jackson Books (Seaport location), U.S. book launch
September 26, 2023: Toronto — Liss Gallery on Cumberland Ave., Canadian book launch
September 27, 2023: Ottawa — Perfect Books, book signing event.
October 4, 2023: Toronto Public Library, Don Mills Branch, author talk and book signing
October 12, 2023: Drom Taberna, Toronto: Jazz singer Ori Dagan presents The Beatles Songbook! with guest Deirdre Kelly signing copies of Fashioning The Beatles, 458 Queen St. W., 6-8pm
October 16, 2023: Classi Learning online author talk
October 18, 2023: Holland & Sherry, 31 Savile Row, London, England, 6 to 8pm, U.K. book launch
October 21, 2023: Thornbury, Ont., Jessica’s Book Nook and the L. E. Shore Public Library, author talk and book signing:
November 16, 2023: Vancouver, B.C., Cross & Crows Books, author Deirdre Kelly in conversation with Vancouver fashion historian Ivan Sayers, 7 to 830pm
November 19, 2023: Cambridge, Ont., Fashion History Museum, “A Mod Tea Party,” author talk and book signing, 2 to 3:30 pm
https://www.fashionhistorymuseum.com
November 24, 2023: Meaford Public Library, author talk and book signing, 2pm
https://www.meaford.ca/en/explore-play/adult-programs.aspx
February 6, 2024: George Brown College, Fashion Department, author talk and book signing
February 9-11, 2024: Fest for Beatles Fans, TWA Hotel at John F. Kennedy Airport, New York, author book signing and live on-stage interview with Beatles’ insider Jenny Boyd
February 12, 2024: Toronto Metropolitan University, author talk
UPCOMING:
August 7, 2024: Toronto Public Library, Runnymede branch, author talk and book signing
August 9 to 11: Fest in Chicago, book selling and signing
November 5, 2024: Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City, author talk and book signing
What Fashioning The Beatles is about….
John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sgt. Pepper to Nehru collars and psychedelia, the Beatles used clothing to express their individual and group identities and, especially, to grow their following.
They did it without benefit of stylists or consultants, making their own rules and changing their looks as many as five times a year to keep a few steps ahead of the crowd in the tumultuous, fashion-obsessed sixties. More than fifty years after their break-up, their style continues to animate the collections of some of the world’s leading designers, including Thom Browne, John Varvatos, Anna Sui, Tom Ford, Gucci’s Alessandro Michele and, yes, Stella McCartney. Fashioning the Beatles, the first in-depth look at their sartorial legacy, demonstrates that their inimitable style was not an incidental by-product of their fame but an integral part of their act and a key to their globe-spanning success.
Read what the reviewers, readers and critics are saying:
“Rich with detail, this book will immerse rock and fashion history buffs alike in a satisfying intersection of subjects. A must for collections with a particular focus on popular music or historical dress.” – Library Journal
“For the first time, the sensational clothes and costumes flaunted by the Fab Four are seen through the lens of a cultural critic who is a noted expert on the art of performance.” – Bronwyn Cosgrave, editor British Vogue
“You’d think, at this point, there was nothing more to say about the Beatles. You’d be wrong. Deirdre Kelly’s book on the Fab Four as fashion icons and OG influencers tracks their evolving taste as it interacted with the volcanic shifts in aesthetics of the 1960s and 1970s.” – Nelson George, Post-Soul Nation, The Michael Jackson Story, Hip Hop America
“Deirdre Kelly has written the ultimate Beatles’ style book.” – Jonathan Walford, Sixties Fashion and The Seductive Shoe
There’s more coverage here:
The South China Morning Post says Fashioning The Beatles is “a book that examines the profound impact the Beatles had not just on pop culture over the decades, but how the way they dressed has inspired people ever since.”
Read the full article here:
The New York Sun says this: “[I]n her exhaustive and engagingly written study of the Beatles’s sartorial history — “Fashioning the Beatles”— Deirdre Kelly has a great deal to say about how fashion was an important, if not central, concern of the group. At a time when many North American males were bogged down in boxy suits and crew cuts, the Beatles arrived and conquered North America with clean lines and mop tops, completely transforming the look of a generation.”
Read the full article here:
https://www.nysun.com/article/how-the-fab-four-rocked-the-fashion-world
Beatles author Ken Womack says this in Salon.com: “In many ways, Deirdre Kelly’s “Fashioning the Beatles” is long overdue. We take it for granted, as a kind of pop-music commonplace, that the Fab Four transformed rock ‘n’ roll’s sartorial style during the 1960s. Subtitled as “The Looks that Shook the World,” Kelly’s book takes a deep dive into the Beatles’ fashion sense, arguing that the group’s image was not only integral to their success, but the self-conscious product of John, Paul, George and Ringo’s interest in fomenting change.”
Read the full article here:
https://www.salon.com/2023/09/19/fashioning-the-beatles-deirdre-kelly/
Foreword Reviews gives Fashioning the Beatles a GREAT review: “Across their time as a band, [Deirdre] Kelly makes it clear how much the Beatles influenced music, fashion, art, and commerce, even becoming the first artists to launch their own brands and boutiques. And the band’s changing fashions are illustrated with precision throughout; the book makes use of standout photographs that are embellished with fresh context.” —
Read the full article here:
https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/fashioning-the-beatles/
John Lennon expert Jude Southerland Kessler reviews Fashioning The Beatles for CultureSonar, and I’m thrilled as I am a fan of her books:
Danny Sinopoli kindly includes Fashioning The Beatles in his new international travel and lifestyle online newsletter Worldly Goodness, saying my book is “the first in-depth study of the Fab Four’s sartorial legacy to reveal how their constantly changing appearance wasn’t an incidental by-product of their fame, but an integral part of their act and of their global success.” He gets it!
Read the full article here:
https://mailchi.mp/65044e985057/design-12858624?e=edf886d506
ELSEWHERE….
Fashioning The Beatles makes the Globe and Mail’s BEST BOOKS 2023 g
list:
The Vancouver Sun names Fashioning The Beatles a TOP 10 BOOK OF 2023:
Italy’s Io Donna magazine, distributed across Italy via the country’s biggest newspaper, Corriere della Sera, did a mamma mia! of a Fabs fashion spread:
UK’s The Chap Magazine ihighlights Fashioning The Beatles in regular contributor columnist David Evan’s men’s style column in the Winter 2023 issue released in January 2024: https://thechap.co.uk/2024/01/02/chap-winter-23-2/
Here’s an excerpt:
“Three books that I’d recommend for wiling away
the long winter evenings begin with Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World. Longtime Beatles fan Deirdre Kelly looks at a surprisingly little examined topic, the role of the Fab Four as trendsetters throughout the sixties and beyond.
Kelly describes how, while not exactly following
fashion, the Beatles took it in new directions.
They often did this under the guidance of others;
we hear, for example, how Brian Epstein steered
them in the direction of wearing suits after being
unimpressed by their scruffy appearance when he first saw them at the Cavern in Liverpool. They
used tailors such as Dougie Millings and Tommy
Nutter and Edward Sexton. They also wore the
standard sixties fare of Afghan coats, flared Levi’s, and mixed casual with tailoring in a way that was very authentic and personal and anticipated how such styles are worn today.”
WWD puts Fashioning the Beatles on its list of the Top Men’s Style & Fashion books of 2023:
https://wwd.com/menswear-news/mens-lifestyle/new-mens-fashion-books-fall-1235755578/
The Inside Hook calls Fashioning The Beatles “a must-read:”
https://www.insidehook.com/article/books/books-you-should-read-september-2023
UK’s Men’s Style lists Fashioning The Beatles as a Top Style Book of 2023:
https://www.menswearstyle.co.uk/2023/08/04/best-style-books/11520
Meanwhile in the blogosphere …
Carl Thompson covers my analysis of John Lennon’s white suit on the cover of Abbey Road:
Canadian cultural critic Donald Brackett writes favourably about Fashioning The Beatles on his Substack site:
“Deirdre Kelly’s masterful and insightful documenting of their dramatic clothing coolness, Fashioning the Beatles: The Looks that Shook the World, now finally addresses their nearly supernatural chic and how it paralleled the shockingly inspiring evolutionary leaps they took in the art of the popular song. It’s a literary gift of the highest order.”
Read the full review here:
I did an interview with the award-winning critic Dorothy Woodend in Vancouver-based news journal The Tyee:
https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2024/01/01/Why-Beatles-Made-Us-Look/
I was also reviewed in UK fashion magazine The Bite where writer Jada Brookes said that Fashioning The Beatles “provides an in-depth analysis of the sartorial impact and legacy of the Fab Four….”
https://www.thebitemag.com/issue34/31/
Plastic EP in Melbourne, Australia, interviewed me for his TV show and podcast. Look for it on YouTube.
On the USA’s When They Was Fab podcast:
https://whentheywasfab.podbean.com
On the UK’s Beatles Books podcast with host Joe Wisbey:
https://beatlesbooks.podbean.com
On the USA’s BC The Beatles podcast:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/bc-the-beatles/id1408900880?i=1000641952713
On Canada’s Abbey Lane Beatles podcast:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/1607080/14350109
More to come….
For ongoing updates, visit my Deirdre Kelly Facebook page, follow me on X (Twitter)— @deirdre_kelly — and on Instagram — @kellydeirdre
For media requests and other assistance contact Serina Mercier at Sutherland House Books: serina@sutherlandhousebooks.com